Thin Ice

Still, he should have awakened when the car roared below his hilltop, an old Chevrolet heading onto the lake unmuffled. There always was something he should have done, some road untaken beyond the studio’s vault of north-facing windows. Out there, wet snow fell like blossoms. It dusted the frozen lake, a fluttering scrim that obscured the scrub pines and crossings and little towns and only petered out after 3:00 a.m. The wind had shifted to the south, sweeping the sky clear, revealing a million stars. Then a crescent moon rose from the treetops—unnoticed although a few lights had already come on in those habitations where other men lived as he did, listening to the scratch of pine boughs against metal roofs, watching instant coffee drop in veils through cups of steaming water.

At first light, Kern still knew nothing, awakening with a groan and a gummy mouth. It was Sunday, a rest day, as void of possibilities as the immaculate, stretched canvases stacked everywhere in the room. Wandering to the windows, he scratched and yawned, unprepared for anything but the sprawl of the lake.

Then he saw the car’s fatal course. Its tire tracks stood out against the overnight snow, so that Kern pictured an animal hunted, its frantic spoor traced in blue-shadowed ruts, gouged deep where the car had backed in the slush, fishtailing on a serpentine course—toward shore and safety where beer signs had glowed through the night, then out onto the white immensity of the lake, heading nowhere into the bright cone of headlights, the driver laughing and certainly drunk, home free as he plunged through the ice.

Kern called 911 then slid the window open and went to the balcony rail. A ragged blue hole remained where the car had dropped—an expected vacancy with an unexpected duck paddling at its center. Cherry on top, Kern thought. Like those sales calls after Merrill’s crash, standing numb with the receiver in hand as some stranger asked to speak with her, hoping she might re-subscribe, contribute, consider steel siding or participate in a survey.

As it happened, the county emergency crew took the best part of the morning to raise the driver. The duck had disappeared with the first, distant howl of the sirens, a flight missed by all but an ancient Ojibwa who stayed in her car, watching events from the Blue Moon’s parking lot. She waited for the ambulance, for the fire trucks and squad cars. She was still there, an hour later, when a late winter sun emerged, cutting through the haze and forcing squints from the dozen other arrivals—early rising observers with hands in pockets, all shuffling to keep warm.

Dressed in patched down coats, knit caps and oil-stained trousers, they looked forlorn as any troop out of Russia. Kern stood with them, gazing past the scattered vehicles, past the sheriff’s deputies to the unseemly bit of slapstick unfolding upon the lake. The diver was on his belly, sliding over thin ice with a cable clipped to his harness. Two firemen stood back, urging the diver’s progress with whirligig gestures, their shouts smothered by a quarter-mile stretch of snow.

Kern couldn’t say what had drawn him here—perhaps the simple reflex that leads a man to lift his hat for a hearse. He recognized fellow drinkers, regulars at the tavern, but this was no hour for greetings. The crowd was silent, all shoulders, having made grudging room for him, a summer guest who had outstayed his welcome, who sought no missing person, who hadn’t spent a desperate night on the phone.

Kern’s desperation was private. He should have kept to himself. Yet it had not proved possible to stay in the studio with sirens approaching, the world waking to the accident, waiting to hear the noise increase and—please, please, please—passing each house like the spinning wheel in a game of chance, then stopping beside the tavern.

Cold had herded the little knot of observers, pushing them together like beasts on a frozen feedlot. Kern noticed clouds of breath in still air, heads shaking in that staged version of disbelief that aging men perfect in the course of a lifetime.

“Such a shame … So stupid … But why did he do it?” they asked.


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.